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You have a choice between a room temperature Pepsi and being hit in between the eyes with a hammer repeatedly, and while I am also sick of this stupid binary choice, I don’t keep voluntarily choosing the hammer. This is truly a “we’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas” scenario.
If you cannot refuse both, there is no choice. You're just forcing people to drink lukewarm pepsi by threatening them with a hammer between the eyes.
For the most realistic path to that end, the hammer would become so unpopular that an actually decent choice would stand a chance of being more than a spoiler to the Pepsi. For that to work, the Pepsi would need at least twice the approval of the hammer, which would require compromise for the sake of common purpose. Then, the decent alternative would need to be united enough to start pulling the balance, which would also require compromise on lesser points.
But that level of unity seems impossible for many of the progressive factions I see. They're fed up with compromise, and I get it. I just don't think a lasting improvement will happen without it.
Edit: This whole comment thread proves my point. We can't even agree whether we hate the Hammers more than we hate Warm Pepsi.
Do you think that compromise is what the party has been doing with progressives?
Do you think that compromise is what they have been doing with republicans?
They refuse to compromise with the left. They capitulate to the right and call it compromise.
Democrats need to treat the left like constituents. They need to treat the left better than they do the nazis that want to murder us all in camps. They have refused to do so for decades and it's really starting to look like they want the same future the nazis want.
Like I said, I get being fed up with compromise. I'm fed up too. But plurality voting sucks, so let's do some math:
Hammer Party has 45% of the votes. Pepsi Party has 50%. 5% go to some other, minor parties.
Now suppose a Cool Water party appears, clearly better than Warm Pepsi. They start drawing voters, some from the Pepsi, some maybe from non-voters, but the Hammer Party adherents don't relent. They make it to 10%, with the Pepsi Party now standing at, say, 45%. Hammer are down to 43% thanks to higher turnout. Other parties down to 2%.
Next election, more Pepsi compromise voters are encouraged to vote Water. Water is up to 25%! Hammer is at 38% now – we're making progress! Except that the Pepsi party now has a maximum of 37%, if there are no non-voters. Hammer party now has the most votes. That's called the spoiler effect.
Obviously, the Pepsi fraction might see that shift coming and try to avoid it. For that, they'd either have to pull some of the Hammer voters, or accede to the Water voters in hopes of retaining them. Do you think they'll compromise with Water? And do you think the Water voters are willing to trust that compromise?
Unless you somehow manage to rapidly turn a party up to 50% or win a significant amount of voters from both camps, odds are you're going to make things worse. Hopefully, they'll get better after that, unless Hammer Party manages to rig the system in their favour or even get rid of it. Is that a risk worth taking?
For a different example, suppose Water and Pepsi teamed up. Let's take the initial 5% other voters, manage to push Hammer down to 31% and put the Pepsi party at a solid 64%.
For the next election, hammer and other voters remain the same, but the Water party has split off and immediately pulled a solid 25% of voters. Pepsi is still at 39%, still wins. Not ideal, but better than Hammer, right?
The following election sees even more Water voters, maybe higher turnout too. Hammer down to 30%, other voters 2%. Water and Pepsi are a close race, but turn out 33% to 35% in favour of Water.
That's what I mean with compromise: strategically creating a statistical base on which change can be built without risking shooting your own foot.
Of course, the best option would be an actually fair voting system, like Ranked Choice (which is probably easiest to explain), but with how things are now, it'd take a lot of prep work and publicity work to get enough people on board so it doesn't go sideways.
Your entire explanation is predicated on the belief that the Warm Pepsi party doesn't prefer watching everyone get their faces smashed in by hammers to working with the Cool Water party in any capacity.
This is not the case.
No, it's predicated on the belief that Warm Pepsi is still preferable to Hammers and that attempting to supplant either of them with Cool Water in one fell swoop isn't realistic. Under those premises, Cool Water may act as a spoiler party to undermine Warm Pepsi.
Nobody wins by voting third party in a plurality system, unless that third party can overtake one of the two first parties.
So as far as warm pepsi is concerned, cool water is a greater enemy than hammers.
Which is what we're seeing now.
And as far as Cool Water is concerned?
As far as cool water is concerned, people are being forced to drink warm pepsi under threat of being murdered with hammers.
That's not what I was asking. Would Cool Water prefer Warm Pepsi or Hammers to have the plurality?
Because the whole point of my explanation of the Spoiler Effect is this: If the Cool Water party wins over more Warm Pepsi voters than Hammer voters (which it probably would), it may end up splitting the Pepsi vote to the point that the Hammers win.
Unless you can be sure that Cool Water would take the plurality, you'd risk smashing your own face to spite Pepsi.
By all means, do the work to make Cool Water popular and gain support, but don't ignore the reality of strategic voting. It's fucked up, it's ideologically unpalatable, but it's pragmatic.
This is just "drink your warm pepsi or you get the hammer" phrased as a question.
The only point of your condescending centrist-splaining is to gloat that your shitty wing of the party is taking advantage of a situation in which the only alternative to their constant betrayal is worse than they are.
The article is saying that people in the rust belt are sick of both the warm Pepsi and the hammer, so now would be a great time to come in swinging with cool water because at this point people would actually vote them in over both.
Aye, if you can rally enough voters behind a united, third option, that would be the way to break out. I'm cautioning that you need to be sure you can knock out the hammers, otherwise you risk the Spoiler Effect fucking things up. If you take the shot and miss, you might just hit your own foot instead.
Don't ignore the ugly realities of strategic voting just because they don't fit your dream. If you're confident you can break the cycle, by all means, go for it.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I've absolutely given up on any hope of things getting better. We're talking pie in the sky hypotheticals here. It's just nice to see other people want pie, too.
You're just being a reminder that we shouldn't want those things and give up.